I am sure that, like me, you have heard many, many times the sentence “In order to succeed, hard work is required”, or any variant of it.
At first, I thought that I knew what “working hard” meant, and that, by improving my understanding of the concept of “success”, I would create for me and my family a better life.

This “strategy” gave me some positive results of course, but at some stage I realized that I was still quite far from what I felt inside of me to be “my best”!

Looking at the sentence again, “In order to succeed, I must work hard”, there were not many words left in it that needed clarification, so I came to the conclusion that I had to clarify what “working hard” really meant.

Then, once I figured out that working my consulting  business 70 or 80 hours a week was NOT a correct definition of “working hard”, although I believed it and did it for many years, I stopped doing it.

Discovering a part of what “hard work” was not, was of course a success…But I still couldn’t figure out what it really was.

Slowly, that unresolved question sank into a lost part of my subconscious mind…

Then, finally, FINALLY…it happened, last Monday!

I had worked 36 hours nearly non stop (just a break for the MKMMA webcast 🙂 ) to complete a task I REALLY wanted to finish by Monday 9PM…

When it was done, I savored my success and I thought “Well, IT WASN’T HARD after all!”

Then, in search for anything to relax my mind for a few minutes, I grabbed the first book in my reach – that was “The Strangest Secret” by Earl Nightingale (by the way, that’ s a good trick I recommend: always leave good books lying around in your living room!)…

I opened the book at random and read “Now we come to the difficult part – difficult because it means the formation of what is probably a brand new habit , and new habits are not easily formed. Once formed, however, it will follow you for the rest of your life. Stop thinking about what it is you fear. Each time a fearful or negative thought comes into your consciousness, replace it with a mental picture of your positive and worthwhile goal.”

BAM!

At once, I realized what hard work really was!

The answer was there all the time, written black on white in front of my eyes…but I didn’t see it.

I heard tons of testimonies of successful people who were telling crystal clear how they achieved it – and they were all telling the same thing…but I didn’t hear it.

I also did work hard on the right sense at several occasions, and especially since I started the MKMMA training…but I didn’t realize it.

But from now on, I know that HARD WORK is…drum rolls, please…

…hard work is to keep our mind constantly aware of, and focused on our positive and worthwhile goal, whatever the circumstances we are living day by day.

That is the price to pay for allowing our actions to be in synch with our goal.

And that price has nothing to do with the amount of work hours and effort required to achieve the goal!